This article explores the interconnections and relations of Nordic missionaries in early-twentieth-century China. Focusing on encounters in the Hunanese province capital of Changsha in and around the ...1920s, it discusses ways in which Norwegian and Swedish missionary workers from four Christian associations made sense of their position as Nordic Lutherans within the international community in Changsha. Using both unpublished and published sources it explores the arrival of the Church of Sweden Mission to China in 1920 and plans to establish a Swedish Lutheran university in China. In conjunction it examines the Nordics as part of the international networks in the city, the evacuation of foreigners in 1927, and the ways in which they were affected by national and imperial ambitions and relations. The exploration of Nordic missionaries as ambivalent actors in a semi-imperial arena contributes to our understandings of the connections, co-operations and power dynamics of the transimperial world of the early twentieth century.
In the last months of the Second World War, as the Red Army approached Berlin, the Wehrmacht suffered catastrophic losses, resulting in thousands of war graves on East German soil. In the aftermath ...of the war, the Soviet Occupation Zone (1945–9) and the German Democratic Republic (1949–90) committed to a socialist ‘politics of history’ which centred on the liberation of Germany by the Red Army, disowning the German fallen. This article, based on my PhD research and current British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, outlines how the central authorities of the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR managed the thousands of German Wehrmacht war burials on East German territory. I focus, in particular, on how Wehrmacht war burials came to constitute political and ideological liabilities, prompting concerns about their appropriations by the German Lutheran Church and West Germany. In doing so, I uncover a little-known yet highly significant dimension of the transition between the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic.
In Central Europe, the role of religion in the creation of modern states has had many guises. In some predominantly Catholic countries, religious minorities have been an important source for national ...movements that sought emancipation from dominant political rule, which was often connected with the dominant (Catholic) religion. The article is focused on the case of Slovakia, where Lutherans, in spite of making up only a small proportion of the Slovak population, have been one of the two fundamental sources of the national movement for the last two centuries. It shows how the contemporary character of the state, society, and national identity and its relation to religion is influenced by the bi-confessionalism (dualism) of the Slovak national movement that was initiated by Slovak Lutherans in the eighteenth century. Although the Lutheran religious minority has been disappearing since 1990, the article shows how its heritage is still present in the character of contemporary institutions of national tradition and identity.
This article analyses how Finnish hegemonic nationalism was contested by peace movements in Finland from 1919 to 1932. First and foremost, Finnish peace movements contested hegemonic ...Lutheran‐patriotic discourses, which they perceived to have been maintained especially by the Lutheran Church of Finland. Thus, hegemonic Lutheran‐patriotic discourses were contested by peace movements through three church‐related discursive contexts: (1) biblical‐doctrinal interpretations, (2) Christian revivalism and (3) churches' peace ecumenism. Results of this article imply that contesting happened especially through religious discourses, which considered a nationalist state church idolatrous. Peace activists depicted themselves as true Christians and patriots, arguing that peace ecumenical cooperation with them and other churches enabled state churches to renounce hegemonic nationalism. Based on these results, I suggest that when hegemonic nationalism is intertwined strongly with Christianity and the state church, nationalism is challenged through questioning its alleged Christian basis.
In 1926, a New York Times article described the cultural and ethnic flows in south Brazil as a “Melting Pot”. The report predicted that German Brazilians, tied to their ethnoracial origin, would soon ...be Brazilianized. The study of congregational song practices offers insight into the relationship between migration, race, culture, and ethnicity. Moreover, investigating Brazilian Lutheran singing practices helps us understand how the New York Times’ prediction unfolded on the ground. This paper examines the Brazilian Lutheran hymnal Livro de Canto, published in 2017, and displays how Brazil’s ethnoracial diversity is manifested and negotiated in the Lutheran context, both musically and theologically. By interviewing members of the hymnal committee and investigating how they dealt with Brazil’s ethnoraciality in the context of the hymnal compilation, this paper demonstrates ways denominations and churchgoers negotiate theological, cultural, musical, and ethnoracial identities through congregational singing. More importantly, it showcases how Brazilian Lutheran church music practices inform broader social conversations around racism, nationalism, Blackness, and Brazilianness.
In the study of lived religion, the focus on laypeople as religious agents can result in the simplistic juxtaposition of religion-as-practised by individuals and religion-as-prescribed by ...institutions. This perspective leads to analyses that over-emphasize agency and overlook the embeddedness of religious persons in intricate power relations that expand beyond the institution(s) closest to them. I propose that Pierre Bourdieu's social theory, particularly as related to the religious field, offers tools for tackling this issue. While Bourdieu's work has been criticized for relegating the laity to the status of passive consumers of religious goods, his theorizations can also be employed to produce nuanced micro-level accounts that prioritize laypeople's practical knowledge of the field and the positions they take within it. Based on my case study of older Finnish women's normative assessments related to religion, I demonstrate how scholars can investigate the role which their informants' histories and investments within the religious field play in their religion-as-lived. The women in my study, lifelong members of Orthodox or Lutheran churches, defended their positions in the increasingly individualistic Finnish religious field through an emphasis on childhood socialization as the foundation of 'proper' religion.
This article analyses the role of cemetery staff in governing death culture based on a study of cemetery staff working for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark (ELCD). The article analyses the ...values that guide the staff's practices as they conduct their role as frontline employees and navigate between rules, regulations and values in their encounters with the cemetery users. There is a specific focus on the process of guiding the choice of grave plot and the role of cemetery staff as central agents in the shaping of mortuary culture as part of contemporary lived religion. In doing so, it argues for the inclusion of a broader range of official professionals in the study of the lived religion of religious institutions today.
Based on a passage from Manuscript No. 9350 of the Austrian National Library, which, to the author’s knowledge, has not yet attracted scholarly attention, the paper deals with an interesting ...description of Upper Lusatia, which probably originated in the second half of the 17th century and offers some remarkable insights into the religious and cultural situation in this region.
Making Lutherans Hill, Kat
Past & present,
11/2017, Volume:
234, Issue:
suppl_12
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In 1572 the first volume of a chronicle of the Saxon territory of Grafschaft Mansfeld appeared in print, penned by a Lutheran pastor whose credentials for writing the work could hardly be bettered. ...Cyriacus Spangenberg, born in nearby Nordhausen, worked as the court preacher and city pastor in Tal Mansfeld. He was following in his father's footsteps; none other than Martin Luther himself granted Johannes the honor of becoming the first superintendent of the county of Mansfeld. To accompany the chronicle, fellow Lutherans Johannes Mellinger and Tilemann Stella produced a detailed map. The cartographic companion to the historical work depicted a deeply confessionalized imagining of the space of central Germany, and no casual observer could have mistaken this as anything other than Lutheran.
In 1926, a New York Times article described the cultural and ethnic flows in south Brazil as a “Melting Pot”. The report predicted that German Brazilians, tied to their ethnoracial origin, would soon ...be Brazilianized. The study of congregational song practices offers insight into the relationship between migration, race, culture, and ethnicity. Moreover, investigating Brazilian Lutheran singing practices helps us understand how the New York Times’ prediction unfolded on the ground. This paper examines the Brazilian Lutheran hymnal Livro de Canto, published in 2017, and displays how Brazil’s ethnoracial diversity is manifested and negotiated in the Lutheran context, both musically and theologically. By interviewing members of the hymnal committee and investigating how they dealt with Brazil’s ethnoraciality in the context of the hymnal compilation, this paper demonstrates ways denominations and churchgoers negotiate theological, cultural, musical, and ethnoracial identities through congregational singing. More importantly, it showcases how Brazilian Lutheran church music practices inform broader social conversations around racism, nationalism, Blackness, and Brazilianness.
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